Thursday, April 14, 2011

Window Project: Stephanie Rozene--The Politics of Porcelain
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This spring, both the main gallery and Window Projects feature emerging female artists and celebrate their artistic achievements at a time that coincides with International Women's Day (March 2011). Stephanie Rozene draws upon the fine line between design and the visual arts. Her work is the result of extensive research and gifted craftsmanship. Through the medium of ceramics (and with special attention to specific patterns, ornaments, and forms) she explores the politics of European ceramics and traces international developments in this medium back to the reigns of French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. This is her first solo museum show.

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Student Art and Photography Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Whitney Applied Technology Center
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Feats of Clay spotlights the varied and creative ceramics art education programs in our high schools throughout Onondaga County and Central New York. The continued success of Feats of Clay rests with the talented and dedicated high school art teachers and art students.

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

Price: Free
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium
2 Clinton Square, Syracuse

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

Price: Free
Syracuse Technology Garden
235 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists include Fred Zimmerman, David Yaman, Kathy Williams, Carl Steckler, Laurie Seamans, Meg Richardson, Lyla Phillips, Allen Phillips, Joan Niswender, Richard Mitchell, Amy Hnatko, Emily Gibbons, Serry Dans, Kathie Beale, and David Beale.

Orange Pulp: The Pulp Magazine & Contemporary Culture
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Bird Library, 6th Floor
Syracuse University, Syracuse

On display will be pulp magazines, notably titles like Weird Tales and Amazing Stories; the typescript of Isaac Asimov's "Strange Playfellow," which introduced readers to one of science fiction's best known characters, Robbie the Robot; and correspondence with figures like Ray Bradbury.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Human Nature Series: Works of Maria Janina Rizzo
Westcott Community Art Gallery

Price: Free
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

Emerging artist Maria Rizzo exhibits 15 paintings that depict the human nature in an explosive combination of color and symbolism.

Maria Janina Rizzo was born and raised in Italy where she lived until 2007. She received a diploma from the High School for the Arts, and was mentored by the eclectic painter Roberto Giussani, an essential figure for the growth of her artistic development. She then continued on with her studies of painting at Syracuse University. In 2010 she opened "ART IT: Modern & Unique Art with a touch of Italian class" with the desire to offer original paintings and customized artwork. Her paintings were recently featured at the Emerging Women Artists of CNY show at the Red House Gallery, and at the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society.

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

You Are Here
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"You Are Here" explores various intersections of citizenship and art practice. The show grew out of a year-long graduate seminar titled Art and Civic Dialogue, led by Carrie Mae Weems, an artist of international renown, and David A. Ross, the former director of the Whitney Museum and The San Francisco Museum of Art, and currently the chairman of the MFA in art practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

The exhibition represents a roster of dynamic artists working in Syracuse and beyond whose works are concerned with varying notions of social engagement. In that spirit, the words citizenship and art are both carefully reconsidered through a diverse group of works, each bringing a sense of urgency to the complex task of defining the role of art in civic dialogue.

The exhibit includes photographic installations, performance, sculpture, web-based projects, video and a study center that anchors the ideas across disciplines.

A study center, designed by COLAB Director Chris McCray, Weems, Lauren Boldon and Jennifer Hsu, includes books, videos, a bibliography and a timeline highlighting seminal moments and artists in the history of art and social practice.

Participating in the show are Weems, Anneka Herre, Hsu, Boldon, Nathaniel Sullivan, Jay Muhlin, Adrienne Buccella, Rose Marie Cromwell, James Wang, Susannah Sayler, Ed Morris, Marion Wilson, McCray, Siebern Versteeg, Joanna Spitzner, Duke & Battersby, Young_Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Sze Lin Pang, Paula Johnson, Doug DuBois and Hank Willis Thomas.

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

That Year of Living features stunning black-and-white photographs by Jeffrey Henson Scales. Diagnosed with cancer in 2008, Scales was forced to, in his words, weigh the possibilities of his own demise, and whether he had achieved what he felt he was put here to do. It was this diagnosis and contemplation, along with the urging of his wife, Meg Henson Scales, which led him to return to making photographs on a daily basis.

The images in That Year of Living were made in the year following his cancer diagnosis and surgery. Scales photographed mainly in and around Times Square, depicting the part of New York City that he visited every day going to and from work at The New York Times. The images capture the certain hardness mixed with joy, sadness, determination and bewilderment that is found in the faces of young and old alike in New York City. Created in the months following his own experience with mortality, the photographs explore the journey of life and death found in the faces on the streets of New York.

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

The images in Canaries, an exhibition of photographs by Thilde Jensen, are a personal account of the life Jensen has lived with multiple chemical sensitivity, and the people she has met who suffer from the same condition. People with this sensitivity have been dubbed "human canaries," and they are the casualties of what Jensen calls a "ubiquitous synthetic chemical culture."

Jensen became so sensitive to chemicals in the air that she could not sit in traffic, read a book or sit next to someone wearing perfume. She was forced to wear a gas mask when entering banks, supermarkets and doctor's offices. She left her life in New York City, her husband and her career, and moved to the country, where she lived in a tent away from the regular chemicals such as laundry detergents, pesticides and exhaust fumes.

Read a review!

No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

Note: Limestone Art is now in its new location next to Pascale's at 105 Brooklea Dr. in Fayetteville.

Scott Bennett's new series of vivid landscape paintings have found their inspiration close to home, or rather at his new home and studio in Jamesville, NY.  While continuing his characteristic impasto painting technique, Bennett shares his inspiration with us: "Our property has wonderful woods and views in all directions, and most of these paintings are inspired by the beauty I see everyday when I look out any window or walk out the door." His work has been exhibited in over 40 national exhibitions, and is included in numerous corporate and private collections. This is Bennett's second exhibition at Limestone.
 
Michael Matthews' landscapes are developed from sketchbook watercolors created on site during his travels, at times during below freezing temperatures as ice forms while he paints.  Back in the studio, Matthews creates large paintings from a singe sketch or an amalgamation of his watercolors. Michael Matthews lives in Syracuse, NY and in Harrogate, British Columbia.  His work is found in over 60 corporate art collections.

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

This year's version will feature toys from the 1970s. Do you remember playing Pong on Atari, getting your first Luke Skywalker figure, or just wishing to have your own Malibu Barbie? Then you won't want to miss this journey into the decade of Charlie's Angels, Richard Nixon and a gallon of gasoline at fifty cents.

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design"
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

Price: Free
Genet Design Gallery
The Warehouse, 350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Design Gallery at The Warehouse will host two concurrent exhibitions of student work: "Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design."

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" features the work of students enrolled in weaving classes taught by faculty member Sarah Saulson and explores the creative potential of weaving with repurposed materials, both recycled and new. The students were inspired by and found meaning in sources as diverse and commonplace as newspaper, bottle caps, paper bags, zippers, candy wrappers, wire, pantyhose and feathers. The project provides a rich arena for the artists to comment on their lives and the environment, as well as for fun and surprising color and texture exploration. The exhibition includes a loom, and visitors to the gallery are encouraged to sit down and experience weaving.

Presented by museum studies graduate students who are completing their first year of gallery experience in the Practicum course, "Creativity through Exhibition Design" features computer-aided drawings and three-dimensional models of the Design Gallery. Students employed universal design concepts including color selection, spatial arrangement and lighting techniques to put their individual creativity into a theoretical exhibition based on a collection of Tibetan works of art.

For more information about the "Handwoven" show, contact Saulson at sfsaulso@syr.edu. For more information about the "Creativity through Exhibition Design" show, contact Bradley Hudson at bjhudson@syr.edu.

Hands On!
Szozda Gallery

Szozda Gallery
Delavan Center, 501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The April show, Hands On!, features paintings and vessels by two noted Central New York artists produced by applying hands and fingertips.

Artist Karen Thomas-Lillie paints atmospheric landscapes and says that all her inspiration comes from the shores of the east side of Cayuga Lake, primarily from Cayuga to Long Point. Her way of capturing this lush environment is in the tools she uses -- oil bar and her hands to blur edges between land, water and sky.

Similar to Thomas-Lillie, ceramicist Jeremy Randall is also motivated by forces of the environment; however, his hand formed vessels reference rural America, not in landscapes but in architecture and antique implements meant to evoke viewers' nostalgia of a by-gone era.

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

The April show features self portraits by gallery members in a variety of mediums.

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

Forrest Lesch-Middelton's pottery combines historic patterns with modern-day technology. The resulting work creates a subtle narrative that references the cross-cultural influences that impact every facet of daily life. Pottery is used as a metaphor to illustrate this phenomenon. To achieve the intricate patterns, Lesch-Middelton uses silkscreen and embossment transfer techniques. He says of his artwork, "By blending form, pattern, and surface, my goal is to create an object that simultaneously elicits a visceral and intellectual response, followed by a contemplation of my work as a whole."

Lesch-Middelton received his MFA in Ceramics from Utah State University in 2006 and a BFA in Ceramics from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1998. He is currently the Ceramics Program Coordinator at the Sonoma Community Center in Sonoma, California and teaches at Santa Rosa Jr. College and Solano College in the San Francisco Bay area. His artwork has been shown in many venues nationally, including the Baltimore Clayworks (MD), Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (TN), and Santa Fe Clay Center (NM). He currently lives with his wife and two daughters in Northern California.

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Masters of Music candidates will perform thesis compositions beginning at 6:00 p.m.

MFA 2011 presents the work of 17 visual artists and 20 musicians and composers concluding their graduate careers at Syracuse University. On view will be a wide range of traditional and contemporary media, including painting, drawing, photography, interactive and experimental sculpture and conceptual installations. Master's of Music candidates will perform thesis compositions every Thursday at 6:00 p.m. beginning April 14, for the run of the exhibition.

Manipulation of scale and environment is a clear, consistent thread in this year's exhibition. Painters engulf the viewer in their work, through an expansive 17-foot drawing and by the perspective of a 14-foot canvas projecting from the top of a gallery wall. Photographer Shimpei Shirafuji carries a narrative around the perimeter of a room, a contemporary twist on 19th century cycloramas. An installation of half-toned screen-prints by Eric Johanni initially engages the viewer from across the room, and then again once you are directly in front of the work. Other artists utilize the subtlety of scale to create an intimacy that immerses the viewer into the artwork, such as miniature architectural models and unassuming artist performances. Site-specific installations transform galleries into absorbing new environments that influence all of the viewer's senses, creating ephemeral experiences through sound, performance and media. Documentary films that deal with issues of identity and family will also be on view in the media theater.

Weekend and evening visitors can park in the Q4 lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

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Orange Pulp: Works by Norman Saunders
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

A profile of pulp artist Norman Saunders (1907-1989), including 10 lush and dramatic Saunders paintings from the university collection.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 suggested donation
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The 2011 exhibition program will continue to highlight the talented artists of New York State through a series of focused exhibitions. The season opens with Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds, an exhibition featuring more than 100 original works of art that are seriously hilarious. The small-scale drawings depicting the comedic daily lives of humans and animals alike are all rendered by hand in a variety of media, an approach that is becoming increasing rare in a world of computer-generated images.

Dan Reynolds began drawing cartoons in 1989, when he was 30. As a youth center instructor, Reynolds was surrounded by youthful energy and creative minds. He was an avid follower of popular cartoons of the time, such as Gary Larson's Far Side and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. A native of Brewerton, NY, Reynolds was inspired by his Central New York surroundings, a place where snow is abundant and cows can be found just minutes from anywhere. From the beginning, Reynolds has used farm animals as messengers of humor, particularly cows, pigs and chickens, a series that was immediately accepted by Reader's Digest in 1989. A new cartoon has appeared in every issue since then. Reynolds' cartoons have also appeared in thematic Reynolds Unwrapped book compilations featuring everything from sports to holiday special editions. American Greetings and Recycled Greeting Cards also feature Reynolds cartoons on greeting cards for every occasion.

In 2008, Reynolds was diagnosed with testicular cancer and subsequently received months of chemotherapy. While he was in treatment, he began drawing cartoons about cancer and his personal experience which he found was shared by his fellow patients. He shared the cartoons with the staff and patients at the facility and discovered the power of art to bring humor to an otherwise humorless situation.

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Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 suggested donation
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In 2008, Ah Leon envisioned a monumental ceramic installation showcasing dozens of stoneware desks and chairs in neat rows like the classrooms of our youth. It began with a small grouping called Memories of Elementary School first exhibited in August 2008 at The Taipei Gallery Exposition and in 2009 at the Phoenix Art Museum in conjunction with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference. Ah Leon continued to make more desks which were exhibited at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in 2010. Another year has passed and Ah Leon has completed the 20 sets of desks and chairs which will be showcased in this exhibition.

His original idea was to create a classroom environment that would “lead audiences to remember their childhood stories.” Ah Leon studied elementary school desks, determined that his creations would be authentic, revealing memories through carved initials, scratches and drawings on their worn surfaces. His classroom would preserve the stories of our childhood as if they were “frozen in the museum space.”

The first two rows of tables and chairs appear new. They become progressively more dilapidated--some broken, some leaning--until the last rows where the furniture is falling over and ultimately only chips and severed parts remain on the floor. In one area the desks are arranged as if a teacher reads to a group of children. The impact of the scene is immediate: viewers are taken back to their own childhood classroom and long forgotten memories drift to the surface.

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Cannonball Press Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

Cannonball Press, the Brooklyn-based alternative pirate press co-founded by artists Martin Mazorra and Mike Houston, will present an exhibition, which includes new, large-scale graphic works, installations and sculpture. As Cannonball Press, Mazorra and Houston publish and sell limited-run editions of emerging artists' work and display it on their website, as well as at shows and festivals. The venture seeks to invite talented artists to explore the medium and make affordable, high-quality editions. Artists represented include Drew Iwaniw, Katy Seals, Joseph Velasquez, John Hitchcock, Derrick Riley, Meghan O'Connor, and Dusty Herbig, assistant professor of printmaking at VPA.

For more information, contact Dusty Herbig, 315-443-4519 or dtherbig@syr.edu, or XL Projects (during gallery hours), 315-443-2542.

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

Price: Free
The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The young female Swiss designer duo, Sarah Kueng and Lovis Caputo, will install a hotel in the Warehouse Gallery. The main gallery will be transformed into small ephemeral rooms where the visitor is invited to take a break from reality and to take a mini-vacation complete with a number of very simple, inexpensive and joyful elements. When seated or lying down, the public's focus is drawn to the interior space and lighting. The idea for a temporary hotel goes back to Kueng's and Caputo's 72 Hours Hotel, which was initially developed in 2006 for the train station in Zurich, Switzerland. Both artists have been widely exhibited. This is their first museum solo show in the U.S.

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100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibition features the art of 35 women artists -- nine local to Syracuse, and the rest from communities across the country. These women, in keeping with the mission of ArtRage, are also activists and their work expresses a whole range of issues important to both women and the community of concerned people worldwide: self-image, hunger, collective action, war, children, the status of women, immigration, environmental crisis, alternative lifestyles and self-discovery.

Participating artists include Arlene Abend, Amy Bartell, Ellen Blalock, Marlena Buczek, Elizabeth Carter, Jen Cartwright, the Chicago Women's Graphic Collective, Sue Coe, Erin Currier, Jane Evershed, Raina Gentry, Susan Grabel, Sharon Lee Hart, Robin Hewlett, Gail Hoffman, Nancy Hom, Katherine Hughes, Lahib Jaddo, Mollie Kellogg, Kate Luscher, Dierdre Luzwick, Sofia Perez, Ruth Putter, Favianna Rodriguez, Gazelle Samizay, Nicole Schulman, Sarah Walroth, Anita Welych and Oceans Unraveled project with artists: Aviva Alter, Mary Buczek, Mary Ellen Croteau.

Video Now
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
Hosmer Auditorium, Everson Museum
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Everson's annual screening of fresh, innovative and experimental short videos by students in Syracuse University's Transmedia Department. Light refreshments will be served during an intermission reception where the public can meet the artists.

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Freyer's series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom's high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children's mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of "dress up"--the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills--become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created a site-specific installation that streams across the façade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms" and "Survival" that challenge viewers' assumptions about the world we live in through the use of language as art. Whether questioning consumerist impulses or lamenting the struggles of daily living, Jenny Holzer always provokes a response. Her work crosses the boundary between poetry and visual art, and suggests both the limitations and power of technology and the information age.

For more than 30 years, this influential American conceptual artist has been creating subversive works that blend in among advertisements in public spaces questioning and confronting our passive consumption of information. Since the early 1970s, Holzer has been collecting and writing phrases and aphorisms found in literature, philosophy and contemporary culture. She calls these summaries her Truisms, and has printed them on bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches, footstools, stickers, t-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, video, sound, light projection, and the Internet. In 1982, Holzer installed "Truisms" on one of Times Square's gigantic LED billboards. In the 1980s, for her "Survival" series, Holzer adopted more personal and urgent messages about the realities of everyday living. Power, vulnerability, violence, tenderness, moral struggles and motherhood are courageously chronicled in this series which continuously prods the viewer to question the role of individuals in society.

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Film Premiere: 300 Miles to Freedom

Price: $10 regular, $5 student
Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A new film tells the story of John W. Jones, a fugitive slave who escaped bondage in Leesburg, VA, in 1844 and traveled the Underground Railroad to Elmira, NY. He arrived there as a 27-year-old illiterate with $1.46 in his pocket. By his death in 1900, he was a wealthy, literate, respected member of the community.

Filmmakers are Richard Breyer, professor and co-director of the Documentary Film and History Program in the Newhouse School, and Anand Kamalakar, Newhouse School alumnus and founder of Trilok Fusion Media in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The filmmakers take Jones' route from Leesburg to Elmira, and tell his story through the voices of those they meet along the way -- historians, ferry boat captains, ministers, farmers, restaurant and gas station owners. And they tell the Elmira chapters of the film in the same way -- weaving the voices and images of the past with those of the present.

Proceeds from the event will benefit Syracuse's Southside Community Coalition.

Wine, Women and Film: The Graduate
Redhouse

Price: $8
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

A screening of The Graduate, followed by a discussion with Owen Shapiro, professor of film at SU, co-founder and artistic director of the Syracuse International Film Festival.

Part of a year-long film series celebrating the role of women in filmmaking.

Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

Price: Free
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

Price: Free
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

Sam Emanuel, piano
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Music of Beethoven, Berg and Schumann.

Performance held in conjunction with SU Art Gallery's MFA 2011 exhibit.

The Brew with The Brethren, Moldy Miles
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Cruel April 2011
Point of Contact Gallery
Featuring María Negroni, Michelle Gil-Montero, Colleen Kattau

Price: Free
Point of Contact Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Point of Contact celebrates National Poetry Month with weekly poetry gatherings and a new poetry collection: Corresponding Voices, Vol. 4. The gallery will host multilingual poetry readings every Thursday in April. Each reading will feature poems from the new collection presented by the newly published authors and special guests. A reception will follow each reading.

María Negroni has published the following works: Poetry: De tanto desolar (1985); La jaula bajo el trapo (1991); El viaje de la noche (1994); Diario Extranjero (2000), La ineptitud (2002), Arte y Fuga (2004), Andanza (2009), and La Boca del Infierno (2010). Novels: El sueño de Ursula (1998), La Anunciación (2007) and a book in collaboration with Argentine artist Jorge Macchi, Buenos Aires Tour (2004). She received a Guggenheim fellowship in poetry (1994), Rockefeller Foundation (1998); Fundación Octavio Paz (2001); New York Foundation for the Arts (2005), and Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2007). Her book Islandia received the PEN Award for best book of poetry in translation, New York 2001. She has just been awarded the Premio Internacional de Ensayo de Siglo XXI (México) for her book Galería Fantástica. She currently teaches Latin American Literature at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.

Michelle Gil-Montero's poems and translations of Latin American poetry have appeared in Jacket Magazine, Colorado Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Conjunctions, and Zoland, among others, and in the anthology 500 Years of Latin American Poetry. She teaches Creative Writing and lives in Pittsburgh.

Colleen Kattau is an Associate Professor of Spanish at SUNY Cortland where she teaches Latin American culture and literature and women's studies. She received her PhD from Syracuse University where her doctoral thesis was on the Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos. Colleen has published articles on the nueva canción movement. Her most recent publications include "The Power of Song for Nonviolent Transformative Action," in Positive Peace: Reflections on Peace, Education, Nonviolence and Social Change (2010), and "Thought and Action Across Borders: The Small Farmer's Movement of Cajibío and the Central New York Sister-City Partnership," in Democracy Works: Joining Theory and Action to Foster Global Change (2008). She is also a bilingual singer-songwriter and social change musician. Her music has been featured on Amy Goodman's TV/Radio news program, Democracy Now.

A Wee Bit O' Murder
Acme Mystery Company

Price: $32.50 plus tax and gratuities (includes meal and show)
Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

Holy St. Patrick on a stick! Someone has stolen the pot of gold and now you and all the other leprechauns of Clover Union Local Number 7 have your little tails in a spin. The president of your local, Jimmy Jack Daniels O'Toole is demanding that you get your wee bottoms over to the pub as fast as your little feet can go. If the International Fellowship of Little Knickers finds out about this, you'll all be turned into garden gnomes!

For reservations, phone 315-475-1807, or email syracuse@meatballs.com.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
First Year Players

Price: $7 regular, $4 with SU ID
Goldstein Auditorium, Schine Student Center
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Friday, April 15, 2011

Window Project: Stephanie Rozene--The Politics of Porcelain
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This spring, both the main gallery and Window Projects feature emerging female artists and celebrate their artistic achievements at a time that coincides with International Women's Day (March 2011). Stephanie Rozene draws upon the fine line between design and the visual arts. Her work is the result of extensive research and gifted craftsmanship. Through the medium of ceramics (and with special attention to specific patterns, ornaments, and forms) she explores the politics of European ceramics and traces international developments in this medium back to the reigns of French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. This is her first solo museum show.

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Student Art and Photography Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Whitney Applied Technology Center
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Feats of Clay spotlights the varied and creative ceramics art education programs in our high schools throughout Onondaga County and Central New York. The continued success of Feats of Clay rests with the talented and dedicated high school art teachers and art students.

Davidovich in Situ: A Video Art Project
Point of Contact Gallery

Price: Free
Point of Contact Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Argentine video artist Jaime Davidovich returns to Syracuse University after an amazing year of grand-scale museum exhibitions worldwide, to work on site at The Point of Contact Gallery. Davidovich will present a series of his classic videos along with collage, photography, and a new series of paintings that he will produce on site.

Davidovich, on Painting and Video Art:

"My paintings are hybrids combining the tactile sensation of painting with the electronic pulse of video. The works are small in scale and intimate in nature. I want to do an art that speaks on a one-to-one basis with the viewer, no actors or story line, just a scale for human dialogue. In a time of video as spectacle, my work is indeed conflictive. I am interested in establishing a link (no pun intended) between Morandi and the Internet; the personal gesture and digital reproduction. These are the opposites that attract me. I use video because it is intimate, personal. I use the brush because is my gestural DNA."

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

Price: Free
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium
2 Clinton Square, Syracuse

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

Price: Free
Syracuse Technology Garden
235 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists include Fred Zimmerman, David Yaman, Kathy Williams, Carl Steckler, Laurie Seamans, Meg Richardson, Lyla Phillips, Allen Phillips, Joan Niswender, Richard Mitchell, Amy Hnatko, Emily Gibbons, Serry Dans, Kathie Beale, and David Beale.

Orange Pulp: The Pulp Magazine & Contemporary Culture
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Bird Library, 6th Floor
Syracuse University, Syracuse

On display will be pulp magazines, notably titles like Weird Tales and Amazing Stories; the typescript of Isaac Asimov's "Strange Playfellow," which introduced readers to one of science fiction's best known characters, Robbie the Robot; and correspondence with figures like Ray Bradbury.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Human Nature Series: Works of Maria Janina Rizzo
Westcott Community Art Gallery

Price: Free
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

Emerging artist Maria Rizzo exhibits 15 paintings that depict the human nature in an explosive combination of color and symbolism.

Maria Janina Rizzo was born and raised in Italy where she lived until 2007. She received a diploma from the High School for the Arts, and was mentored by the eclectic painter Roberto Giussani, an essential figure for the growth of her artistic development. She then continued on with her studies of painting at Syracuse University. In 2010 she opened "ART IT: Modern & Unique Art with a touch of Italian class" with the desire to offer original paintings and customized artwork. Her paintings were recently featured at the Emerging Women Artists of CNY show at the Red House Gallery, and at the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society.

Annual High School Seniors Exhibit
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

High schools within a 30 mile radius of Syracuse are invited to display seniors’ artwork and have them juried by the CNY Art Guild.

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

You Are Here
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"You Are Here" explores various intersections of citizenship and art practice. The show grew out of a year-long graduate seminar titled Art and Civic Dialogue, led by Carrie Mae Weems, an artist of international renown, and David A. Ross, the former director of the Whitney Museum and The San Francisco Museum of Art, and currently the chairman of the MFA in art practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

The exhibition represents a roster of dynamic artists working in Syracuse and beyond whose works are concerned with varying notions of social engagement. In that spirit, the words citizenship and art are both carefully reconsidered through a diverse group of works, each bringing a sense of urgency to the complex task of defining the role of art in civic dialogue.

The exhibit includes photographic installations, performance, sculpture, web-based projects, video and a study center that anchors the ideas across disciplines.

A study center, designed by COLAB Director Chris McCray, Weems, Lauren Boldon and Jennifer Hsu, includes books, videos, a bibliography and a timeline highlighting seminal moments and artists in the history of art and social practice.

Participating in the show are Weems, Anneka Herre, Hsu, Boldon, Nathaniel Sullivan, Jay Muhlin, Adrienne Buccella, Rose Marie Cromwell, James Wang, Susannah Sayler, Ed Morris, Marion Wilson, McCray, Siebern Versteeg, Joanna Spitzner, Duke & Battersby, Young_Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Sze Lin Pang, Paula Johnson, Doug DuBois and Hank Willis Thomas.

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

The images in Canaries, an exhibition of photographs by Thilde Jensen, are a personal account of the life Jensen has lived with multiple chemical sensitivity, and the people she has met who suffer from the same condition. People with this sensitivity have been dubbed "human canaries," and they are the casualties of what Jensen calls a "ubiquitous synthetic chemical culture."

Jensen became so sensitive to chemicals in the air that she could not sit in traffic, read a book or sit next to someone wearing perfume. She was forced to wear a gas mask when entering banks, supermarkets and doctor's offices. She left her life in New York City, her husband and her career, and moved to the country, where she lived in a tent away from the regular chemicals such as laundry detergents, pesticides and exhaust fumes.

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Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

That Year of Living features stunning black-and-white photographs by Jeffrey Henson Scales. Diagnosed with cancer in 2008, Scales was forced to, in his words, weigh the possibilities of his own demise, and whether he had achieved what he felt he was put here to do. It was this diagnosis and contemplation, along with the urging of his wife, Meg Henson Scales, which led him to return to making photographs on a daily basis.

The images in That Year of Living were made in the year following his cancer diagnosis and surgery. Scales photographed mainly in and around Times Square, depicting the part of New York City that he visited every day going to and from work at The New York Times. The images capture the certain hardness mixed with joy, sadness, determination and bewilderment that is found in the faces of young and old alike in New York City. Created in the months following his own experience with mortality, the photographs explore the journey of life and death found in the faces on the streets of New York.

No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

Note: Limestone Art is now in its new location next to Pascale's at 105 Brooklea Dr. in Fayetteville.

Scott Bennett's new series of vivid landscape paintings have found their inspiration close to home, or rather at his new home and studio in Jamesville, NY.  While continuing his characteristic impasto painting technique, Bennett shares his inspiration with us: "Our property has wonderful woods and views in all directions, and most of these paintings are inspired by the beauty I see everyday when I look out any window or walk out the door." His work has been exhibited in over 40 national exhibitions, and is included in numerous corporate and private collections. This is Bennett's second exhibition at Limestone.
 
Michael Matthews' landscapes are developed from sketchbook watercolors created on site during his travels, at times during below freezing temperatures as ice forms while he paints.  Back in the studio, Matthews creates large paintings from a singe sketch or an amalgamation of his watercolors. Michael Matthews lives in Syracuse, NY and in Harrogate, British Columbia.  His work is found in over 60 corporate art collections.

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

This year's version will feature toys from the 1970s. Do you remember playing Pong on Atari, getting your first Luke Skywalker figure, or just wishing to have your own Malibu Barbie? Then you won't want to miss this journey into the decade of Charlie's Angels, Richard Nixon and a gallon of gasoline at fifty cents.

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design"
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

Price: Free
Genet Design Gallery
The Warehouse, 350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Design Gallery at The Warehouse will host two concurrent exhibitions of student work: "Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design."

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" features the work of students enrolled in weaving classes taught by faculty member Sarah Saulson and explores the creative potential of weaving with repurposed materials, both recycled and new. The students were inspired by and found meaning in sources as diverse and commonplace as newspaper, bottle caps, paper bags, zippers, candy wrappers, wire, pantyhose and feathers. The project provides a rich arena for the artists to comment on their lives and the environment, as well as for fun and surprising color and texture exploration. The exhibition includes a loom, and visitors to the gallery are encouraged to sit down and experience weaving.

Presented by museum studies graduate students who are completing their first year of gallery experience in the Practicum course, "Creativity through Exhibition Design" features computer-aided drawings and three-dimensional models of the Design Gallery. Students employed universal design concepts including color selection, spatial arrangement and lighting techniques to put their individual creativity into a theoretical exhibition based on a collection of Tibetan works of art.

For more information about the "Handwoven" show, contact Saulson at sfsaulso@syr.edu. For more information about the "Creativity through Exhibition Design" show, contact Bradley Hudson at bjhudson@syr.edu.

Hands On!
Szozda Gallery

Szozda Gallery
Delavan Center, 501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The April show, Hands On!, features paintings and vessels by two noted Central New York artists produced by applying hands and fingertips.

Artist Karen Thomas-Lillie paints atmospheric landscapes and says that all her inspiration comes from the shores of the east side of Cayuga Lake, primarily from Cayuga to Long Point. Her way of capturing this lush environment is in the tools she uses -- oil bar and her hands to blur edges between land, water and sky.

Similar to Thomas-Lillie, ceramicist Jeremy Randall is also motivated by forces of the environment; however, his hand formed vessels reference rural America, not in landscapes but in architecture and antique implements meant to evoke viewers' nostalgia of a by-gone era.

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

The April show features self portraits by gallery members in a variety of mediums.

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

Forrest Lesch-Middelton's pottery combines historic patterns with modern-day technology. The resulting work creates a subtle narrative that references the cross-cultural influences that impact every facet of daily life. Pottery is used as a metaphor to illustrate this phenomenon. To achieve the intricate patterns, Lesch-Middelton uses silkscreen and embossment transfer techniques. He says of his artwork, "By blending form, pattern, and surface, my goal is to create an object that simultaneously elicits a visceral and intellectual response, followed by a contemplation of my work as a whole."

Lesch-Middelton received his MFA in Ceramics from Utah State University in 2006 and a BFA in Ceramics from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1998. He is currently the Ceramics Program Coordinator at the Sonoma Community Center in Sonoma, California and teaches at Santa Rosa Jr. College and Solano College in the San Francisco Bay area. His artwork has been shown in many venues nationally, including the Baltimore Clayworks (MD), Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (TN), and Santa Fe Clay Center (NM). He currently lives with his wife and two daughters in Northern California.

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

MFA 2011 presents the work of 17 visual artists and 20 musicians and composers concluding their graduate careers at Syracuse University. On view will be a wide range of traditional and contemporary media, including painting, drawing, photography, interactive and experimental sculpture and conceptual installations. Master's of Music candidates will perform thesis compositions every Thursday at 6:00 p.m. beginning April 14, for the run of the exhibition.

Manipulation of scale and environment is a clear, consistent thread in this year's exhibition. Painters engulf the viewer in their work, through an expansive 17-foot drawing and by the perspective of a 14-foot canvas projecting from the top of a gallery wall. Photographer Shimpei Shirafuji carries a narrative around the perimeter of a room, a contemporary twist on 19th century cycloramas. An installation of half-toned screen-prints by Eric Johanni initially engages the viewer from across the room, and then again once you are directly in front of the work. Other artists utilize the subtlety of scale to create an intimacy that immerses the viewer into the artwork, such as miniature architectural models and unassuming artist performances. Site-specific installations transform galleries into absorbing new environments that influence all of the viewer's senses, creating ephemeral experiences through sound, performance and media. Documentary films that deal with issues of identity and family will also be on view in the media theater.

Weekend and evening visitors can park in the Q4 lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

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Orange Pulp: Works by Norman Saunders
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

A profile of pulp artist Norman Saunders (1907-1989), including 10 lush and dramatic Saunders paintings from the university collection.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 suggested donation
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The 2011 exhibition program will continue to highlight the talented artists of New York State through a series of focused exhibitions. The season opens with Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds, an exhibition featuring more than 100 original works of art that are seriously hilarious. The small-scale drawings depicting the comedic daily lives of humans and animals alike are all rendered by hand in a variety of media, an approach that is becoming increasing rare in a world of computer-generated images.

Dan Reynolds began drawing cartoons in 1989, when he was 30. As a youth center instructor, Reynolds was surrounded by youthful energy and creative minds. He was an avid follower of popular cartoons of the time, such as Gary Larson's Far Side and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. A native of Brewerton, NY, Reynolds was inspired by his Central New York surroundings, a place where snow is abundant and cows can be found just minutes from anywhere. From the beginning, Reynolds has used farm animals as messengers of humor, particularly cows, pigs and chickens, a series that was immediately accepted by Reader's Digest in 1989. A new cartoon has appeared in every issue since then. Reynolds' cartoons have also appeared in thematic Reynolds Unwrapped book compilations featuring everything from sports to holiday special editions. American Greetings and Recycled Greeting Cards also feature Reynolds cartoons on greeting cards for every occasion.

In 2008, Reynolds was diagnosed with testicular cancer and subsequently received months of chemotherapy. While he was in treatment, he began drawing cartoons about cancer and his personal experience which he found was shared by his fellow patients. He shared the cartoons with the staff and patients at the facility and discovered the power of art to bring humor to an otherwise humorless situation.

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Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 suggested donation
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In 2008, Ah Leon envisioned a monumental ceramic installation showcasing dozens of stoneware desks and chairs in neat rows like the classrooms of our youth. It began with a small grouping called Memories of Elementary School first exhibited in August 2008 at The Taipei Gallery Exposition and in 2009 at the Phoenix Art Museum in conjunction with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference. Ah Leon continued to make more desks which were exhibited at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in 2010. Another year has passed and Ah Leon has completed the 20 sets of desks and chairs which will be showcased in this exhibition.

His original idea was to create a classroom environment that would “lead audiences to remember their childhood stories.” Ah Leon studied elementary school desks, determined that his creations would be authentic, revealing memories through carved initials, scratches and drawings on their worn surfaces. His classroom would preserve the stories of our childhood as if they were “frozen in the museum space.”

The first two rows of tables and chairs appear new. They become progressively more dilapidated--some broken, some leaning--until the last rows where the furniture is falling over and ultimately only chips and severed parts remain on the floor. In one area the desks are arranged as if a teacher reads to a group of children. The impact of the scene is immediate: viewers are taken back to their own childhood classroom and long forgotten memories drift to the surface.

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Cannonball Press Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

Cannonball Press, the Brooklyn-based alternative pirate press co-founded by artists Martin Mazorra and Mike Houston, will present an exhibition, which includes new, large-scale graphic works, installations and sculpture. As Cannonball Press, Mazorra and Houston publish and sell limited-run editions of emerging artists' work and display it on their website, as well as at shows and festivals. The venture seeks to invite talented artists to explore the medium and make affordable, high-quality editions. Artists represented include Drew Iwaniw, Katy Seals, Joseph Velasquez, John Hitchcock, Derrick Riley, Meghan O'Connor, and Dusty Herbig, assistant professor of printmaking at VPA.

For more information, contact Dusty Herbig, 315-443-4519 or dtherbig@syr.edu, or XL Projects (during gallery hours), 315-443-2542.

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

Price: Free
The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The young female Swiss designer duo, Sarah Kueng and Lovis Caputo, will install a hotel in the Warehouse Gallery. The main gallery will be transformed into small ephemeral rooms where the visitor is invited to take a break from reality and to take a mini-vacation complete with a number of very simple, inexpensive and joyful elements. When seated or lying down, the public's focus is drawn to the interior space and lighting. The idea for a temporary hotel goes back to Kueng's and Caputo's 72 Hours Hotel, which was initially developed in 2006 for the train station in Zurich, Switzerland. Both artists have been widely exhibited. This is their first museum solo show in the U.S.

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Opening: The Braid of Night and Day: Works by Cayetano Valenzuela
Echo

745 N. Salina St. (formerly Craft Chemistry)
Syracuse

There will be an opening reception this evening 7:00-9:00 pm.

100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibition features the art of 35 women artists -- nine local to Syracuse, and the rest from communities across the country. These women, in keeping with the mission of ArtRage, are also activists and their work expresses a whole range of issues important to both women and the community of concerned people worldwide: self-image, hunger, collective action, war, children, the status of women, immigration, environmental crisis, alternative lifestyles and self-discovery.

Participating artists include Arlene Abend, Amy Bartell, Ellen Blalock, Marlena Buczek, Elizabeth Carter, Jen Cartwright, the Chicago Women's Graphic Collective, Sue Coe, Erin Currier, Jane Evershed, Raina Gentry, Susan Grabel, Sharon Lee Hart, Robin Hewlett, Gail Hoffman, Nancy Hom, Katherine Hughes, Lahib Jaddo, Mollie Kellogg, Kate Luscher, Dierdre Luzwick, Sofia Perez, Ruth Putter, Favianna Rodriguez, Gazelle Samizay, Nicole Schulman, Sarah Walroth, Anita Welych and Oceans Unraveled project with artists: Aviva Alter, Mary Buczek, Mary Ellen Croteau.

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Freyer's series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom's high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children's mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of "dress up"--the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills--become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Annual Spring Dance Concert
LeMoyne College
Le Moyne Student Dance Company

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Annual spring semester dance concert featuring works of CNY choreographers as well as Le Moyne student choreographers.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created a site-specific installation that streams across the façade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms" and "Survival" that challenge viewers' assumptions about the world we live in through the use of language as art. Whether questioning consumerist impulses or lamenting the struggles of daily living, Jenny Holzer always provokes a response. Her work crosses the boundary between poetry and visual art, and suggests both the limitations and power of technology and the information age.

For more than 30 years, this influential American conceptual artist has been creating subversive works that blend in among advertisements in public spaces questioning and confronting our passive consumption of information. Since the early 1970s, Holzer has been collecting and writing phrases and aphorisms found in literature, philosophy and contemporary culture. She calls these summaries her Truisms, and has printed them on bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches, footstools, stickers, t-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, video, sound, light projection, and the Internet. In 1982, Holzer installed "Truisms" on one of Times Square's gigantic LED billboards. In the 1980s, for her "Survival" series, Holzer adopted more personal and urgent messages about the realities of everyday living. Power, vulnerability, violence, tenderness, moral struggles and motherhood are courageously chronicled in this series which continuously prods the viewer to question the role of individuals in society.

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Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

Price: Free
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

Price: Free
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

Panel Discussion on Jazz and Culture
Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences

Price: Free
Winnick Hillel Center for Jewish Life
102 Walnut Place (corner of Harrison St.), Syracuse

Jazz icon David Liebman, a legendary saxophonist who shot to fame with Miles Davis in the 1970s and was awarded the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Award, will participate in a panel discussion on jazz and culture. The discussion will be moderated by Theo Cateforis, assistant professor of art and music histories at SU. Other panelists include Bret Zvacek, professor of music at the State University of New York at Potsdam and music director of the CNY Jazz Orchestra; Ken Frieden, professor and the B.G. Rudolph Chair in Judaic studies at SU; and Joseph Riposo, director of the Morton B. Schiff Jazz Ensemble and director of jazz studies at SU.

Paul Geremia
Folkus Project

May Memorial Unitarian Society
3800 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

For almost 40 years, Paul Geremia has built a reputation as one of the finest finger-style blues guitarists alive. Admired by musicians like Bonnie Raitt and Dave Van Ronk (who called him the "greatest living blues singer"), Geremia sets the standard for today's players, keeping traditional blues fresh and alive. What's unique about his playing is the way his guitar doesn't just accompany his husky, soulful voice but adds dramatic counterpoint through the use of rhythmic flourishes and stunning single-line runs. He's quick to blow a zippy harmonica solo over his intricate fingerpicking, creating a real conversation between guitar and harmonica that, along with his voice, reaches every corner of a song.

Geremia has immersed himself in various styles of country blues since the mid-60's when he was inspired by performances and personal contact with seminal bluesmen like Son House, Skip James, and Pink Anderson. He was particularly drawn to the driving Piedmont style that joined thumping bass lines to swinging ragtime melodies, but he's equally adept at the deeply emotional Delta blues. By combining his interpretations of his blues heroes with his own original compositions, Geremia has created a style which is very much his own.

For reservations, e-mail tickets@folkus.org or phone 315-657-4982.

*CANCELLED* Classics Series: Bach's Monumental Mass
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Cornell University Glee Club and Chorus
Daniel Hege, conductor

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Bach Mass in B minor, BWV 232

Joanna Mongiardo, Lianne Coble, sopranos; Quinn Patrick, mezzo-soprano; Dinyar Vania, tenor; Jake Gardner, bass

Big K.R.I.T, with Freddie Gibbs, Smoke DZA, Apache Chief
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Ages 16+ admitted.

The Last Five Years
Encore Presentations

Price: $37.25 dinner theater (includes tax and tip); $20 show only
Glen Loch Restaurant
4626 North St., Jamesville

Dinner at 7:00 pm; show follows at 8:00 pm.

The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown, starring Molly Brown and Robert G. Searle

For tickets, phone 315-469-6969.

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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged
Syracuse Shakespeare-in-the-Park
Nora O'Dea, director

Price: $10 regular, $5 with SU ID (students, faculy, staff, alumni)
The Warehouse, Main Auditorium
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This ridiculously funny show covers every play Shakespeare ever wrote in 110 hilarious minutes of side-splitting fun, a witty and wonderful romp through the histories, tragedies and comedies. It's intelligent, insane, interactive, inclusive, irreverent and strictly aimed at adults. See Shakespearean football and a complete audience rendition of Ophelia's psyche. This is the Bard as you've never seen him before.

The show stars Jim Uva, Alan Stillman and Dan Rowlands.

PLEASE NOTE: This show contains adult material and is not recommended for children under 16. For more information, phone 315-476-1835.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
First Year Players

Price: $7 regular, $4 with SU ID
Goldstein Auditorium, Schine Student Center
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The Marvelous Wonderettes
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $20
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

The story is set at the 1958 Springfield High School prom where we meet the Wonderettes — Betty Jean, Cindy Lou, Missy, and Suzy, four girls with hopes and dreams as big as their crinoline skirts and voices to match! As we learn about their lives and loves, we are treated to the girls performing classic 50s and 60s songs. Written by Roger Bean.

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Wrong Window!
The Talent Company
Christine Lightcap, director

Price: $25 regular, $23 students/seniors, $20 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

In a rare departure from big musicals, The Talent Company presents the CNY premiere of Wrong Window!, a hilarious comedy "whodunnit" that pays homage to master of horror, Alfred Hitchcock. Aside from the obvious Hitchcock film reference to the classic film Rear Window, authors Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore own up to a set of influences that include To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, The Birds, North by Northwest, Torn Curtain, The 39 Steps and Psycho.

Off-and-on New York couple Marnie and Jeff enter an even more complicated phase of their relationship when they think they spy their cross-courtyard neighbor do away with his wife. When the lady vanishes, suspicion places murder beyond a shadow of a doubt. With their best friends Robbie and Midge, Jeff and Marnie sneak into their neighbor's apartment--39 steps away--and the fun begins! Among multiple door slammings, body snatching, and a frantic flashlight chase are Detective Thomas and handyman Loomis who round out the zany cast of characters who try to sort out what has happened as two questions remain: Who killed Lila Larswald? And...if she's not dead...then who is?

This hilarious spoof has fever-pitched one liners and gag-filled dialogue from start to finish. The story plays out on a set designed by Navroz Dabu that allows the audience to be present in one apartment while viewing the action in its mirror-image unit across the way. Light design by Cindy Shippers and sound design by Tony Vadala add to the zaniness.

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Saturday, April 16, 2011

Window Project: Stephanie Rozene--The Politics of Porcelain
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This spring, both the main gallery and Window Projects feature emerging female artists and celebrate their artistic achievements at a time that coincides with International Women's Day (March 2011). Stephanie Rozene draws upon the fine line between design and the visual arts. Her work is the result of extensive research and gifted craftsmanship. Through the medium of ceramics (and with special attention to specific patterns, ornaments, and forms) she explores the politics of European ceramics and traces international developments in this medium back to the reigns of French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. This is her first solo museum show.

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Student Art and Photography Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Whitney Applied Technology Center
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

The Braid of Night and Day: Works by Cayetano Valenzuela
Echo

745 N. Salina St. (formerly Craft Chemistry)
Syracuse

Annual High School Seniors Exhibit
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

High schools within a 30 mile radius of Syracuse are invited to display seniors’ artwork and have them juried by the CNY Art Guild.

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 suggested donation
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In 2008, Ah Leon envisioned a monumental ceramic installation showcasing dozens of stoneware desks and chairs in neat rows like the classrooms of our youth. It began with a small grouping called Memories of Elementary School first exhibited in August 2008 at The Taipei Gallery Exposition and in 2009 at the Phoenix Art Museum in conjunction with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference. Ah Leon continued to make more desks which were exhibited at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in 2010. Another year has passed and Ah Leon has completed the 20 sets of desks and chairs which will be showcased in this exhibition.

His original idea was to create a classroom environment that would “lead audiences to remember their childhood stories.” Ah Leon studied elementary school desks, determined that his creations would be authentic, revealing memories through carved initials, scratches and drawings on their worn surfaces. His classroom would preserve the stories of our childhood as if they were “frozen in the museum space.”

The first two rows of tables and chairs appear new. They become progressively more dilapidated--some broken, some leaning--until the last rows where the furniture is falling over and ultimately only chips and severed parts remain on the floor. In one area the desks are arranged as if a teacher reads to a group of children. The impact of the scene is immediate: viewers are taken back to their own childhood classroom and long forgotten memories drift to the surface.

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Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 suggested donation
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The 2011 exhibition program will continue to highlight the talented artists of New York State through a series of focused exhibitions. The season opens with Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds, an exhibition featuring more than 100 original works of art that are seriously hilarious. The small-scale drawings depicting the comedic daily lives of humans and animals alike are all rendered by hand in a variety of media, an approach that is becoming increasing rare in a world of computer-generated images.

Dan Reynolds began drawing cartoons in 1989, when he was 30. As a youth center instructor, Reynolds was surrounded by youthful energy and creative minds. He was an avid follower of popular cartoons of the time, such as Gary Larson's Far Side and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. A native of Brewerton, NY, Reynolds was inspired by his Central New York surroundings, a place where snow is abundant and cows can be found just minutes from anywhere. From the beginning, Reynolds has used farm animals as messengers of humor, particularly cows, pigs and chickens, a series that was immediately accepted by Reader's Digest in 1989. A new cartoon has appeared in every issue since then. Reynolds' cartoons have also appeared in thematic Reynolds Unwrapped book compilations featuring everything from sports to holiday special editions. American Greetings and Recycled Greeting Cards also feature Reynolds cartoons on greeting cards for every occasion.

In 2008, Reynolds was diagnosed with testicular cancer and subsequently received months of chemotherapy. While he was in treatment, he began drawing cartoons about cancer and his personal experience which he found was shared by his fellow patients. He shared the cartoons with the staff and patients at the facility and discovered the power of art to bring humor to an otherwise humorless situation.

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Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

The April show features self portraits by gallery members in a variety of mediums.

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design"
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

Price: Free
Genet Design Gallery
The Warehouse, 350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Design Gallery at The Warehouse will host two concurrent exhibitions of student work: "Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design."

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" features the work of students enrolled in weaving classes taught by faculty member Sarah Saulson and explores the creative potential of weaving with repurposed materials, both recycled and new. The students were inspired by and found meaning in sources as diverse and commonplace as newspaper, bottle caps, paper bags, zippers, candy wrappers, wire, pantyhose and feathers. The project provides a rich arena for the artists to comment on their lives and the environment, as well as for fun and surprising color and texture exploration. The exhibition includes a loom, and visitors to the gallery are encouraged to sit down and experience weaving.

Presented by museum studies graduate students who are completing their first year of gallery experience in the Practicum course, "Creativity through Exhibition Design" features computer-aided drawings and three-dimensional models of the Design Gallery. Students employed universal design concepts including color selection, spatial arrangement and lighting techniques to put their individual creativity into a theoretical exhibition based on a collection of Tibetan works of art.

For more information about the "Handwoven" show, contact Saulson at sfsaulso@syr.edu. For more information about the "Creativity through Exhibition Design" show, contact Bradley Hudson at bjhudson@syr.edu.

Hands On!
Szozda Gallery

Szozda Gallery
Delavan Center, 501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The April show, Hands On!, features paintings and vessels by two noted Central New York artists produced by applying hands and fingertips.

Artist Karen Thomas-Lillie paints atmospheric landscapes and says that all her inspiration comes from the shores of the east side of Cayuga Lake, primarily from Cayuga to Long Point. Her way of capturing this lush environment is in the tools she uses -- oil bar and her hands to blur edges between land, water and sky.

Similar to Thomas-Lillie, ceramicist Jeremy Randall is also motivated by forces of the environment; however, his hand formed vessels reference rural America, not in landscapes but in architecture and antique implements meant to evoke viewers' nostalgia of a by-gone era.

You Are Here
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"You Are Here" explores various intersections of citizenship and art practice. The show grew out of a year-long graduate seminar titled Art and Civic Dialogue, led by Carrie Mae Weems, an artist of international renown, and David A. Ross, the former director of the Whitney Museum and The San Francisco Museum of Art, and currently the chairman of the MFA in art practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

The exhibition represents a roster of dynamic artists working in Syracuse and beyond whose works are concerned with varying notions of social engagement. In that spirit, the words citizenship and art are both carefully reconsidered through a diverse group of works, each bringing a sense of urgency to the complex task of defining the role of art in civic dialogue.

The exhibit includes photographic installations, performance, sculpture, web-based projects, video and a study center that anchors the ideas across disciplines.

A study center, designed by COLAB Director Chris McCray, Weems, Lauren Boldon and Jennifer Hsu, includes books, videos, a bibliography and a timeline highlighting seminal moments and artists in the history of art and social practice.

Participating in the show are Weems, Anneka Herre, Hsu, Boldon, Nathaniel Sullivan, Jay Muhlin, Adrienne Buccella, Rose Marie Cromwell, James Wang, Susannah Sayler, Ed Morris, Marion Wilson, McCray, Siebern Versteeg, Joanna Spitzner, Duke & Battersby, Young_Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Sze Lin Pang, Paula Johnson, Doug DuBois and Hank Willis Thomas.

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

Forrest Lesch-Middelton's pottery combines historic patterns with modern-day technology. The resulting work creates a subtle narrative that references the cross-cultural influences that impact every facet of daily life. Pottery is used as a metaphor to illustrate this phenomenon. To achieve the intricate patterns, Lesch-Middelton uses silkscreen and embossment transfer techniques. He says of his artwork, "By blending form, pattern, and surface, my goal is to create an object that simultaneously elicits a visceral and intellectual response, followed by a contemplation of my work as a whole."

Lesch-Middelton received his MFA in Ceramics from Utah State University in 2006 and a BFA in Ceramics from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1998. He is currently the Ceramics Program Coordinator at the Sonoma Community Center in Sonoma, California and teaches at Santa Rosa Jr. College and Solano College in the San Francisco Bay area. His artwork has been shown in many venues nationally, including the Baltimore Clayworks (MD), Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (TN), and Santa Fe Clay Center (NM). He currently lives with his wife and two daughters in Northern California.

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

This year's version will feature toys from the 1970s. Do you remember playing Pong on Atari, getting your first Luke Skywalker figure, or just wishing to have your own Malibu Barbie? Then you won't want to miss this journey into the decade of Charlie's Angels, Richard Nixon and a gallon of gasoline at fifty cents.

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

MFA 2011 presents the work of 17 visual artists and 20 musicians and composers concluding their graduate careers at Syracuse University. On view will be a wide range of traditional and contemporary media, including painting, drawing, photography, interactive and experimental sculpture and conceptual installations. Master's of Music candidates will perform thesis compositions every Thursday at 6:00 p.m. beginning April 14, for the run of the exhibition.

Manipulation of scale and environment is a clear, consistent thread in this year's exhibition. Painters engulf the viewer in their work, through an expansive 17-foot drawing and by the perspective of a 14-foot canvas projecting from the top of a gallery wall. Photographer Shimpei Shirafuji carries a narrative around the perimeter of a room, a contemporary twist on 19th century cycloramas. An installation of half-toned screen-prints by Eric Johanni initially engages the viewer from across the room, and then again once you are directly in front of the work. Other artists utilize the subtlety of scale to create an intimacy that immerses the viewer into the artwork, such as miniature architectural models and unassuming artist performances. Site-specific installations transform galleries into absorbing new environments that influence all of the viewer's senses, creating ephemeral experiences through sound, performance and media. Documentary films that deal with issues of identity and family will also be on view in the media theater.

Weekend and evening visitors can park in the Q4 lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

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Orange Pulp: Works by Norman Saunders
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

A profile of pulp artist Norman Saunders (1907-1989), including 10 lush and dramatic Saunders paintings from the university collection.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibition features the art of 35 women artists -- nine local to Syracuse, and the rest from communities across the country. These women, in keeping with the mission of ArtRage, are also activists and their work expresses a whole range of issues important to both women and the community of concerned people worldwide: self-image, hunger, collective action, war, children, the status of women, immigration, environmental crisis, alternative lifestyles and self-discovery.

Participating artists include Arlene Abend, Amy Bartell, Ellen Blalock, Marlena Buczek, Elizabeth Carter, Jen Cartwright, the Chicago Women's Graphic Collective, Sue Coe, Erin Currier, Jane Evershed, Raina Gentry, Susan Grabel, Sharon Lee Hart, Robin Hewlett, Gail Hoffman, Nancy Hom, Katherine Hughes, Lahib Jaddo, Mollie Kellogg, Kate Luscher, Dierdre Luzwick, Sofia Perez, Ruth Putter, Favianna Rodriguez, Gazelle Samizay, Nicole Schulman, Sarah Walroth, Anita Welych and Oceans Unraveled project with artists: Aviva Alter, Mary Buczek, Mary Ellen Croteau.

No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

Note: Limestone Art is now in its new location next to Pascale's at 105 Brooklea Dr. in Fayetteville.

Scott Bennett's new series of vivid landscape paintings have found their inspiration close to home, or rather at his new home and studio in Jamesville, NY.  While continuing his characteristic impasto painting technique, Bennett shares his inspiration with us: "Our property has wonderful woods and views in all directions, and most of these paintings are inspired by the beauty I see everyday when I look out any window or walk out the door." His work has been exhibited in over 40 national exhibitions, and is included in numerous corporate and private collections. This is Bennett's second exhibition at Limestone.
 
Michael Matthews' landscapes are developed from sketchbook watercolors created on site during his travels, at times during below freezing temperatures as ice forms while he paints.  Back in the studio, Matthews creates large paintings from a singe sketch or an amalgamation of his watercolors. Michael Matthews lives in Syracuse, NY and in Harrogate, British Columbia.  His work is found in over 60 corporate art collections.

Cannonball Press Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

Cannonball Press, the Brooklyn-based alternative pirate press co-founded by artists Martin Mazorra and Mike Houston, will present an exhibition, which includes new, large-scale graphic works, installations and sculpture. As Cannonball Press, Mazorra and Houston publish and sell limited-run editions of emerging artists' work and display it on their website, as well as at shows and festivals. The venture seeks to invite talented artists to explore the medium and make affordable, high-quality editions. Artists represented include Drew Iwaniw, Katy Seals, Joseph Velasquez, John Hitchcock, Derrick Riley, Meghan O'Connor, and Dusty Herbig, assistant professor of printmaking at VPA.

For more information, contact Dusty Herbig, 315-443-4519 or dtherbig@syr.edu, or XL Projects (during gallery hours), 315-443-2542.

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

Price: Free
The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The young female Swiss designer duo, Sarah Kueng and Lovis Caputo, will install a hotel in the Warehouse Gallery. The main gallery will be transformed into small ephemeral rooms where the visitor is invited to take a break from reality and to take a mini-vacation complete with a number of very simple, inexpensive and joyful elements. When seated or lying down, the public's focus is drawn to the interior space and lighting. The idea for a temporary hotel goes back to Kueng's and Caputo's 72 Hours Hotel, which was initially developed in 2006 for the train station in Zurich, Switzerland. Both artists have been widely exhibited. This is their first museum solo show in the U.S.

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Human Nature Series: Works of Maria Janina Rizzo
Westcott Community Art Gallery

Price: Free
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

There will be an opening reception this evening 6:00-8:00 pm.

Emerging artist Maria Rizzo exhibits 15 paintings that depict the human nature in an explosive combination of color and symbolism.

Maria Janina Rizzo was born and raised in Italy where she lived until 2007. She received a diploma from the High School for the Arts, and was mentored by the eclectic painter Roberto Giussani, an essential figure for the growth of her artistic development. She then continued on with her studies of painting at Syracuse University. In 2010 she opened "ART IT: Modern & Unique Art with a touch of Italian class" with the desire to offer original paintings and customized artwork. Her paintings were recently featured at the Emerging Women Artists of CNY show at the Red House Gallery, and at the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society.

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Freyer's series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom's high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children's mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of "dress up"--the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills--become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Annual Spring Dance Concert
LeMoyne College
Le Moyne Student Dance Company

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Annual spring semester dance concert featuring works of CNY choreographers as well as Le Moyne student choreographers.

Annual Spring Dance Concert
LeMoyne College
Le Moyne Student Dance Company

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Annual spring semester dance concert featuring works of CNY choreographers as well as Le Moyne student choreographers.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created a site-specific installation that streams across the façade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms" and "Survival" that challenge viewers' assumptions about the world we live in through the use of language as art. Whether questioning consumerist impulses or lamenting the struggles of daily living, Jenny Holzer always provokes a response. Her work crosses the boundary between poetry and visual art, and suggests both the limitations and power of technology and the information age.

For more than 30 years, this influential American conceptual artist has been creating subversive works that blend in among advertisements in public spaces questioning and confronting our passive consumption of information. Since the early 1970s, Holzer has been collecting and writing phrases and aphorisms found in literature, philosophy and contemporary culture. She calls these summaries her Truisms, and has printed them on bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches, footstools, stickers, t-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, video, sound, light projection, and the Internet. In 1982, Holzer installed "Truisms" on one of Times Square's gigantic LED billboards. In the 1980s, for her "Survival" series, Holzer adopted more personal and urgent messages about the realities of everyday living. Power, vulnerability, violence, tenderness, moral struggles and motherhood are courageously chronicled in this series which continuously prods the viewer to question the role of individuals in society.

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5th Annual One-Take Super-8 Event

Price: $3 cover
The Vault
451 S. Warren St., Syracuse

No cuts, no splices. 25 filmmakers each shot a single reel of Super 8 film which will be premiered tonight, without the filmmaker having seen it first.

Conflict: Peace and War (Syracuse Symposium concert)
CNY Jazz Arts Foundation
Featuring David Liebman, guest artist

Carrier Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The concert will include the world premiere of a commissioned piece by CNYJO Artistic Director Bret Zvacek. Inspired by a poem by Ada Aharoni, an Egyptian-born writer living in Israel, the piece is divided into four movements, and features David Liebman performing Jewish and Arabic themes on soprano sax.

The rest of the program is also international in scope, and features two selections from Duke Ellington's "Far East Suite;" a jazz tribute to the motion picture "Exodus," arranged by Quincy Jones; the Miles Davis classic "Eighty-One;" and originals by Liebman and Zvacek.

With a career spanning more than 40 years, Liebman has played with Elvin Jones, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin and McCoy Tyner. It was Liebman’s association with Miles Davis during the 1970s, however, that made him one of the most influential and successful jazz artists of his generation. Liebman’s advanced improvisational style led to numerous albums, books and instructional recordings, many of which are acknowledged as classics. A master of many styles, including classical, jazz and rock, Liebman has composed hundreds of pieces and has led or co-led more than 100 recording sessions. He also founded the International Association of Schools of Jazz.

Liebman is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including an honorary degree from the Sibelius Academy in Finland, as well as the Order of Arts and Letters from the French government. He has consistently placed among top finalists in the Soprano Saxophone category in the Downbeat Critics Poll since 1973.

The performance grew out of last fall's Syracuse Symposium, which the SU Humanities Center organized and presented, the theme of which was "Conflict: Peace and War."

Diamond Lil On Stage
Kellish Hill Farm

Price: $7
Kellish Hill Farm
3192 Pompey Center Rd., Pompey

Diamond Lil On Stage -- a one woman musical with lots of hats and costumes and a large gold frame through which Elaine Kuracina projects photos of people from the 1900s and gems of film clips from that time. She travels with a piano accompanist who also inserts banjo playing. Some of us locals will accompany Miss Diamond Lil on stage on a few of the songs of that era. What a hoot of a good time to be had by all. Refreshments and snacks will be served in our heated music barn for this special event.

Redhouse Regulars Series: Donna Colton and Loren Barrigar with Relative Harmony
Redhouse

Price: $15 regular, $12 students/seniors
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Outstanding Central New York musicians Donna Colton and Loren Barrigar join forces to perform acoustic songs that we all grew up singing like "Leaving on a Jet Plane", "Helplessly Hoping", and "Jambalaya". Also featured in this concert are Sharon Allen on vocals, George Newton on pedal steel and Sam Paterelli on bass.

Donna Colton is arguably one of the finest female vocalists in the area, having delighted CNY audiences for more than two decades with her rich and soulful sound. Critic Mark Bialzac describes Donna as "A little bit country, a little bit blues, and a lot of heart." In 2007, Donna and her writing partner Sam Paterelli released their CD of originals songs, entitled Tryst, which features various guest artists including Karen Savoca, Joe Davoli and Pete Heitzman.

Since settling in Central New York Loren Barrigar has been in constant demand as a studio musician as well as a live performer. His finely honed songwriting skills have launched his melodies on NBC's #1 rated show ER and on a Christmas CD with BB King and Patti LaBelle. Loren has performed with some of the best acoustic players including Stephen Bennett, Richard Smith, and Australian guitar sensation Tommy Emmanuel.

*CANCELLED* Classics Series: Bach's Monumental Mass
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Cornell University Glee Club and Chorus
Daniel Hege, conductor

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Bach Mass in B minor, BWV 232

Joanna Mongiardo, Lianne Coble, sopranos; Quinn Patrick, mezzo-soprano; Dinyar Vania, tenor; Jake Gardner, bass

Pretty Lights After Party: Paper Diamond with Silas Maximus
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Ages 16+ admitted.

Snow White
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

Price: $5
Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

Interactive retelling of the classic children's story.

The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"Once I knew only darkness and stillness... my life was without past or future... but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living." In her own words, Helen Keller captures the inspirational heart of William Gibson's classic American play. Between the emptiness and the rapture, though, came a fierce struggle of wills, with Helen, in her darkness and stillness, on one side, and the determined Annie Sullivan on the other, a young woman who had endured a lifetime of pain in just 20 years. Gibson's text is unsparing and unflinching in its depiction of their confrontation and mutual triumph. The hearts that will be leaping will be ours.

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The Last Five Years
Encore Presentations

Price: $37.25 dinner theater (includes tax and tip); $20 show only
Glen Loch Restaurant
4626 North St., Jamesville

Dinner at 7:00 pm; show follows at 8:00 pm.

The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown, starring Molly Brown and Robert G. Searle

For tickets, phone 315-469-6969.

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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged
Syracuse Shakespeare-in-the-Park
Nora O'Dea, director

Price: $10 regular, $5 with SU ID (students, faculy, staff, alumni)
The Warehouse, Main Auditorium
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This ridiculously funny show covers every play Shakespeare ever wrote in 110 hilarious minutes of side-splitting fun, a witty and wonderful romp through the histories, tragedies and comedies. It's intelligent, insane, interactive, inclusive, irreverent and strictly aimed at adults. See Shakespearean football and a complete audience rendition of Ophelia's psyche. This is the Bard as you've never seen him before.

The show stars Jim Uva, Alan Stillman and Dan Rowlands.

PLEASE NOTE: This show contains adult material and is not recommended for children under 16. For more information, phone 315-476-1835.

Mixed Relief
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This play about women writers of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) will culminate in a facilitated roundtable discussion concerning the present condition of federal and state arts funding. The play is directed by Milton Loayza, director and founder of "Autopista del Sur" theater company together with local activist Rebecca Fuentes, and will feature a cast of local activists and community members featuring Mable Wilson, Deborah Morales, Pat Rector, Margarita Pignataro, Debra Richardson, Mary Marquis, and Barbara Schloss. The discussion on the present state of funding for the arts will be facilitated by Nancy Keefe Rhodes.

The WPA was a federal jobs program designed to stimulate the U.S. economy during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The government recognized that artists had valuable skills to contribute towards the recovery, and the WPA employed over 40,000 artists at its peak. The plays, music, posters, murals, monuments, parks and amphitheaters that they created are still enjoyed by the public today.

Saluting the women of the WPA is a way to remind the public that there was an amazing artistic outpouring when our federal government made a serious investment in arts jobs in the 1930s. Many artists are calling on President Obama to include artists in his economic stimulus plans. The WPA anniversary reminds us that now, as in the Great Depression, our resilience; creativity and future sustainability are riding on the stories that shape us.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
First Year Players

Price: $7 regular, $4 with SU ID
Goldstein Auditorium, Schine Student Center
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The Marvelous Wonderettes
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $20
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

The story is set at the 1958 Springfield High School prom where we meet the Wonderettes — Betty Jean, Cindy Lou, Missy, and Suzy, four girls with hopes and dreams as big as their crinoline skirts and voices to match! As we learn about their lives and loves, we are treated to the girls performing classic 50s and 60s songs. Written by Roger Bean.

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The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"Once I knew only darkness and stillness... my life was without past or future... but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living." In her own words, Helen Keller captures the inspirational heart of William Gibson's classic American play. Between the emptiness and the rapture, though, came a fierce struggle of wills, with Helen, in her darkness and stillness, on one side, and the determined Annie Sullivan on the other, a young woman who had endured a lifetime of pain in just 20 years. Gibson's text is unsparing and unflinching in its depiction of their confrontation and mutual triumph. The hearts that will be leaping will be ours.

Read a Review!

Wrong Window!
The Talent Company
Christine Lightcap, director

Price: $25 regular, $23 students/seniors, $20 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

In a rare departure from big musicals, The Talent Company presents the CNY premiere of Wrong Window!, a hilarious comedy "whodunnit" that pays homage to master of horror, Alfred Hitchcock. Aside from the obvious Hitchcock film reference to the classic film Rear Window, authors Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore own up to a set of influences that include To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, The Birds, North by Northwest, Torn Curtain, The 39 Steps and Psycho.

Off-and-on New York couple Marnie and Jeff enter an even more complicated phase of their relationship when they think they spy their cross-courtyard neighbor do away with his wife. When the lady vanishes, suspicion places murder beyond a shadow of a doubt. With their best friends Robbie and Midge, Jeff and Marnie sneak into their neighbor's apartment--39 steps away--and the fun begins! Among multiple door slammings, body snatching, and a frantic flashlight chase are Detective Thomas and handyman Loomis who round out the zany cast of characters who try to sort out what has happened as two questions remain: Who killed Lila Larswald? And...if she's not dead...then who is?

This hilarious spoof has fever-pitched one liners and gag-filled dialogue from start to finish. The story plays out on a set designed by Navroz Dabu that allows the audience to be present in one apartment while viewing the action in its mirror-image unit across the way. Light design by Cindy Shippers and sound design by Tony Vadala add to the zaniness.

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Sunday, April 17, 2011

Window Project: Stephanie Rozene--The Politics of Porcelain
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This spring, both the main gallery and Window Projects feature emerging female artists and celebrate their artistic achievements at a time that coincides with International Women's Day (March 2011). Stephanie Rozene draws upon the fine line between design and the visual arts. Her work is the result of extensive research and gifted craftsmanship. Through the medium of ceramics (and with special attention to specific patterns, ornaments, and forms) she explores the politics of European ceramics and traces international developments in this medium back to the reigns of French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. This is her first solo museum show.

Student Art and Photography Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Whitney Applied Technology Center
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

That Year of Living features stunning black-and-white photographs by Jeffrey Henson Scales. Diagnosed with cancer in 2008, Scales was forced to, in his words, weigh the possibilities of his own demise, and whether he had achieved what he felt he was put here to do. It was this diagnosis and contemplation, along with the urging of his wife, Meg Henson Scales, which led him to return to making photographs on a daily basis.

The images in That Year of Living were made in the year following his cancer diagnosis and surgery. Scales photographed mainly in and around Times Square, depicting the part of New York City that he visited every day going to and from work at The New York Times. The images capture the certain hardness mixed with joy, sadness, determination and bewilderment that is found in the faces of young and old alike in New York City. Created in the months following his own experience with mortality, the photographs explore the journey of life and death found in the faces on the streets of New York.

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

The images in Canaries, an exhibition of photographs by Thilde Jensen, are a personal account of the life Jensen has lived with multiple chemical sensitivity, and the people she has met who suffer from the same condition. People with this sensitivity have been dubbed "human canaries," and they are the casualties of what Jensen calls a "ubiquitous synthetic chemical culture."

Jensen became so sensitive to chemicals in the air that she could not sit in traffic, read a book or sit next to someone wearing perfume. She was forced to wear a gas mask when entering banks, supermarkets and doctor's offices. She left her life in New York City, her husband and her career, and moved to the country, where she lived in a tent away from the regular chemicals such as laundry detergents, pesticides and exhaust fumes.

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"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design"
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

Price: Free
Genet Design Gallery
The Warehouse, 350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Design Gallery at The Warehouse will host two concurrent exhibitions of student work: "Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design."

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" features the work of students enrolled in weaving classes taught by faculty member Sarah Saulson and explores the creative potential of weaving with repurposed materials, both recycled and new. The students were inspired by and found meaning in sources as diverse and commonplace as newspaper, bottle caps, paper bags, zippers, candy wrappers, wire, pantyhose and feathers. The project provides a rich arena for the artists to comment on their lives and the environment, as well as for fun and surprising color and texture exploration. The exhibition includes a loom, and visitors to the gallery are encouraged to sit down and experience weaving.

Presented by museum studies graduate students who are completing their first year of gallery experience in the Practicum course, "Creativity through Exhibition Design" features computer-aided drawings and three-dimensional models of the Design Gallery. Students employed universal design concepts including color selection, spatial arrangement and lighting techniques to put their individual creativity into a theoretical exhibition based on a collection of Tibetan works of art.

For more information about the "Handwoven" show, contact Saulson at sfsaulso@syr.edu. For more information about the "Creativity through Exhibition Design" show, contact Bradley Hudson at bjhudson@syr.edu.

Hands On!
Szozda Gallery

Szozda Gallery
Delavan Center, 501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The April show, Hands On!, features paintings and vessels by two noted Central New York artists produced by applying hands and fingertips.

Artist Karen Thomas-Lillie paints atmospheric landscapes and says that all her inspiration comes from the shores of the east side of Cayuga Lake, primarily from Cayuga to Long Point. Her way of capturing this lush environment is in the tools she uses -- oil bar and her hands to blur edges between land, water and sky.

Similar to Thomas-Lillie, ceramicist Jeremy Randall is also motivated by forces of the environment; however, his hand formed vessels reference rural America, not in landscapes but in architecture and antique implements meant to evoke viewers' nostalgia of a by-gone era.

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

The April show features self portraits by gallery members in a variety of mediums.

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

Forrest Lesch-Middelton's pottery combines historic patterns with modern-day technology. The resulting work creates a subtle narrative that references the cross-cultural influences that impact every facet of daily life. Pottery is used as a metaphor to illustrate this phenomenon. To achieve the intricate patterns, Lesch-Middelton uses silkscreen and embossment transfer techniques. He says of his artwork, "By blending form, pattern, and surface, my goal is to create an object that simultaneously elicits a visceral and intellectual response, followed by a contemplation of my work as a whole."

Lesch-Middelton received his MFA in Ceramics from Utah State University in 2006 and a BFA in Ceramics from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1998. He is currently the Ceramics Program Coordinator at the Sonoma Community Center in Sonoma, California and teaches at Santa Rosa Jr. College and Solano College in the San Francisco Bay area. His artwork has been shown in many venues nationally, including the Baltimore Clayworks (MD), Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (TN), and Santa Fe Clay Center (NM). He currently lives with his wife and two daughters in Northern California.

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

This year's version will feature toys from the 1970s. Do you remember playing Pong on Atari, getting your first Luke Skywalker figure, or just wishing to have your own Malibu Barbie? Then you won't want to miss this journey into the decade of Charlie's Angels, Richard Nixon and a gallon of gasoline at fifty cents.

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

MFA 2011 presents the work of 17 visual artists and 20 musicians and composers concluding their graduate careers at Syracuse University. On view will be a wide range of traditional and contemporary media, including painting, drawing, photography, interactive and experimental sculpture and conceptual installations. Master's of Music candidates will perform thesis compositions every Thursday at 6:00 p.m. beginning April 14, for the run of the exhibition.

Manipulation of scale and environment is a clear, consistent thread in this year's exhibition. Painters engulf the viewer in their work, through an expansive 17-foot drawing and by the perspective of a 14-foot canvas projecting from the top of a gallery wall. Photographer Shimpei Shirafuji carries a narrative around the perimeter of a room, a contemporary twist on 19th century cycloramas. An installation of half-toned screen-prints by Eric Johanni initially engages the viewer from across the room, and then again once you are directly in front of the work. Other artists utilize the subtlety of scale to create an intimacy that immerses the viewer into the artwork, such as miniature architectural models and unassuming artist performances. Site-specific installations transform galleries into absorbing new environments that influence all of the viewer's senses, creating ephemeral experiences through sound, performance and media. Documentary films that deal with issues of identity and family will also be on view in the media theater.

Weekend and evening visitors can park in the Q4 lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

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Orange Pulp: Works by Norman Saunders
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

A profile of pulp artist Norman Saunders (1907-1989), including 10 lush and dramatic Saunders paintings from the university collection.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 suggested donation
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The 2011 exhibition program will continue to highlight the talented artists of New York State through a series of focused exhibitions. The season opens with Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds, an exhibition featuring more than 100 original works of art that are seriously hilarious. The small-scale drawings depicting the comedic daily lives of humans and animals alike are all rendered by hand in a variety of media, an approach that is becoming increasing rare in a world of computer-generated images.

Dan Reynolds began drawing cartoons in 1989, when he was 30. As a youth center instructor, Reynolds was surrounded by youthful energy and creative minds. He was an avid follower of popular cartoons of the time, such as Gary Larson's Far Side and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. A native of Brewerton, NY, Reynolds was inspired by his Central New York surroundings, a place where snow is abundant and cows can be found just minutes from anywhere. From the beginning, Reynolds has used farm animals as messengers of humor, particularly cows, pigs and chickens, a series that was immediately accepted by Reader's Digest in 1989. A new cartoon has appeared in every issue since then. Reynolds' cartoons have also appeared in thematic Reynolds Unwrapped book compilations featuring everything from sports to holiday special editions. American Greetings and Recycled Greeting Cards also feature Reynolds cartoons on greeting cards for every occasion.

In 2008, Reynolds was diagnosed with testicular cancer and subsequently received months of chemotherapy. While he was in treatment, he began drawing cartoons about cancer and his personal experience which he found was shared by his fellow patients. He shared the cartoons with the staff and patients at the facility and discovered the power of art to bring humor to an otherwise humorless situation.

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Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 suggested donation
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In 2008, Ah Leon envisioned a monumental ceramic installation showcasing dozens of stoneware desks and chairs in neat rows like the classrooms of our youth. It began with a small grouping called Memories of Elementary School first exhibited in August 2008 at The Taipei Gallery Exposition and in 2009 at the Phoenix Art Museum in conjunction with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference. Ah Leon continued to make more desks which were exhibited at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in 2010. Another year has passed and Ah Leon has completed the 20 sets of desks and chairs which will be showcased in this exhibition.

His original idea was to create a classroom environment that would “lead audiences to remember their childhood stories.” Ah Leon studied elementary school desks, determined that his creations would be authentic, revealing memories through carved initials, scratches and drawings on their worn surfaces. His classroom would preserve the stories of our childhood as if they were “frozen in the museum space.”

The first two rows of tables and chairs appear new. They become progressively more dilapidated--some broken, some leaning--until the last rows where the furniture is falling over and ultimately only chips and severed parts remain on the floor. In one area the desks are arranged as if a teacher reads to a group of children. The impact of the scene is immediate: viewers are taken back to their own childhood classroom and long forgotten memories drift to the surface.

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Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Cannonball Press Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

Cannonball Press, the Brooklyn-based alternative pirate press co-founded by artists Martin Mazorra and Mike Houston, will present an exhibition, which includes new, large-scale graphic works, installations and sculpture. As Cannonball Press, Mazorra and Houston publish and sell limited-run editions of emerging artists' work and display it on their website, as well as at shows and festivals. The venture seeks to invite talented artists to explore the medium and make affordable, high-quality editions. Artists represented include Drew Iwaniw, Katy Seals, Joseph Velasquez, John Hitchcock, Derrick Riley, Meghan O'Connor, and Dusty Herbig, assistant professor of printmaking at VPA.

For more information, contact Dusty Herbig, 315-443-4519 or dtherbig@syr.edu, or XL Projects (during gallery hours), 315-443-2542.

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Freyer's series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom's high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children's mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of "dress up"--the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills--become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created a site-specific installation that streams across the façade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms" and "Survival" that challenge viewers' assumptions about the world we live in through the use of language as art. Whether questioning consumerist impulses or lamenting the struggles of daily living, Jenny Holzer always provokes a response. Her work crosses the boundary between poetry and visual art, and suggests both the limitations and power of technology and the information age.

For more than 30 years, this influential American conceptual artist has been creating subversive works that blend in among advertisements in public spaces questioning and confronting our passive consumption of information. Since the early 1970s, Holzer has been collecting and writing phrases and aphorisms found in literature, philosophy and contemporary culture. She calls these summaries her Truisms, and has printed them on bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches, footstools, stickers, t-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, video, sound, light projection, and the Internet. In 1982, Holzer installed "Truisms" on one of Times Square's gigantic LED billboards. In the 1980s, for her "Survival" series, Holzer adopted more personal and urgent messages about the realities of everyday living. Power, vulnerability, violence, tenderness, moral struggles and motherhood are courageously chronicled in this series which continuously prods the viewer to question the role of individuals in society.

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Live! at the Everson: Fred Karpoff, piano
Civic Morning Musicals

Price: $15 adults, students free with ID
Hosmer Auditorium, Everson Museum
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Preludes by Debussy, Prokofiev, Benshoof, and Rachmaninoff, along with Beethoven's Sonata No. 28 in A Major, op. 101, form a larger prelude to set the stage for Chopin's masterful 24 Preludes, op. 28.

Folk Music Series: The Irish Channel Jazz Band
Liverpool Public Library

Price: Free
Liverpool Public Library
310 Tulip St., Liverpool

The Irish Channel Jazz Band includes leader Pat Carroll on cornet and vocals, Dick Sheridan on banjo, Dick Chave on trombone and Woody Peters on tuba. All four musicians hail from Central New York.
Immersed in the music of old New Orleans, the quartet performs traditional jazz tunes such as "Running Wild," "Tin Roof Blues," "Everybody Loves My Baby" and the spiritual "I'll Fly Away."

Two-Piano Concert
Featuring Ida Trebicka and Nathan Sumrall

Price: Free
University United Methodist Church
1085 E. Genesee St. (corner of University Ave.), Syracuse

A concert of music by Mozart, Schumann, Prokofiev, Piazzolla, and Milhaud. Trebicka, a native of Albania and member of the piano faculty at Syracuse University, has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and China. Sumrall holds graduate degrees in collaborative piano and music education from Syracuse University and has performed extensively throughout the South and in Central New York. He is currently organist at University Church. A reception will follow the program.

Silver Screen Spectacular
Syracuse University Brass Ensemble
James T. Spencer, conductor

Price: $5 regular, $2 seniors, $6 family
Palace Theater
2384 James St., Syracuse

A multimedia event for the whole family, featuring live music and on-screen images, emceed by WCNY's Bruce Paulsen. Selections will include familiar tunes from popular cartoons, James Bond, Saving Private Ryan, Citizen Kane, Batman, and more.

Hendricks Chapel Choir Spring Concert
Hendricks Chapel
Featuring Kola Owolabi, organ

Price: Free
Hendricks Chapel
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Durufle Requiem

Hendricks Chapel Choir members Sierra Fox and Alex Brozdowski will be soloists for the work.

The Hendricks Chapel Choir is a select, voice-mixed choir of about 40 students that provides music for the Sunday morning interdenominational Protestant service at SU, as well as for various campus events. The choir presents annual holiday and spring concerts, and tours internationally every four years.

Free parking will be available in the Q1 parking lot or the Irving Avenue Parking Garage.

Charlie Hunter, with MKGO
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Reaching for Marsby
Armory Square Playwrights

Price: $7 regular, $5 students/seniors
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

A staged reading of a new play by Jeff Kramer.

Gary Blenkinsopp, a 40ish actor of minor standing in New York City, becomes an accidental hit in England after he lands the lead role in a small production of a Dickens-era comedy (fictional). Undisciplined, arrogant, irrepressible and unfaithful to his girlfriend back home, Gary earns the enmity of the English cast and crew, which has no choice but to suffer his oafish behavior as the play's success grows for unexpected reasons. The romantic and artistic reckoning that inevitably visits Gary pushes him toward his most challenging role yet -- that of an adult. The cast features Mark Eischen, Krystal Scott, Moe Harrington, Kris Rusho, Richard D. Harris, Michael O'Neill, Brendon Cole, and Karis Wiggins. Len Fonte will direct.

Jeff Kramer's award-winning humor column appears Mondays in the Syracuse Post-Standard. During a 25-year newspaper career, he has also written for the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register. His first play, Lowdown Lies, was named "Best Original Production" at the Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) awards and was winner of the Last Play Standing competition in Chicago.

A talkback with the author will follow.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged
Syracuse Shakespeare-in-the-Park
Nora O'Dea, director

Price: $10 regular, $5 with SU ID (students, faculy, staff, alumni)
The Warehouse, Main Auditorium
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This ridiculously funny show covers every play Shakespeare ever wrote in 110 hilarious minutes of side-splitting fun, a witty and wonderful romp through the histories, tragedies and comedies. It's intelligent, insane, interactive, inclusive, irreverent and strictly aimed at adults. See Shakespearean football and a complete audience rendition of Ophelia's psyche. This is the Bard as you've never seen him before.

The show stars Jim Uva, Alan Stillman and Dan Rowlands.

PLEASE NOTE: This show contains adult material and is not recommended for children under 16. For more information, phone 315-476-1835.

The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"Once I knew only darkness and stillness... my life was without past or future... but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living." In her own words, Helen Keller captures the inspirational heart of William Gibson's classic American play. Between the emptiness and the rapture, though, came a fierce struggle of wills, with Helen, in her darkness and stillness, on one side, and the determined Annie Sullivan on the other, a young woman who had endured a lifetime of pain in just 20 years. Gibson's text is unsparing and unflinching in its depiction of their confrontation and mutual triumph. The hearts that will be leaping will be ours.

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Wrong Window!
The Talent Company
Christine Lightcap, director

Price: $25 regular, $23 students/seniors, $20 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

In a rare departure from big musicals, The Talent Company presents the CNY premiere of Wrong Window!, a hilarious comedy "whodunnit" that pays homage to master of horror, Alfred Hitchcock. Aside from the obvious Hitchcock film reference to the classic film Rear Window, authors Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore own up to a set of influences that include To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, The Birds, North by Northwest, Torn Curtain, The 39 Steps and Psycho.

Off-and-on New York couple Marnie and Jeff enter an even more complicated phase of their relationship when they think they spy their cross-courtyard neighbor do away with his wife. When the lady vanishes, suspicion places murder beyond a shadow of a doubt. With their best friends Robbie and Midge, Jeff and Marnie sneak into their neighbor's apartment--39 steps away--and the fun begins! Among multiple door slammings, body snatching, and a frantic flashlight chase are Detective Thomas and handyman Loomis who round out the zany cast of characters who try to sort out what has happened as two questions remain: Who killed Lila Larswald? And...if she's not dead...then who is?

This hilarious spoof has fever-pitched one liners and gag-filled dialogue from start to finish. The story plays out on a set designed by Navroz Dabu that allows the audience to be present in one apartment while viewing the action in its mirror-image unit across the way. Light design by Cindy Shippers and sound design by Tony Vadala add to the zaniness.

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The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"Once I knew only darkness and stillness... my life was without past or future... but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living." In her own words, Helen Keller captures the inspirational heart of William Gibson's classic American play. Between the emptiness and the rapture, though, came a fierce struggle of wills, with Helen, in her darkness and stillness, on one side, and the determined Annie Sullivan on the other, a young woman who had endured a lifetime of pain in just 20 years. Gibson's text is unsparing and unflinching in its depiction of their confrontation and mutual triumph. The hearts that will be leaping will be ours.

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Monday, April 18, 2011

Window Project: Stephanie Rozene--The Politics of Porcelain
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This spring, both the main gallery and Window Projects feature emerging female artists and celebrate their artistic achievements at a time that coincides with International Women's Day (March 2011). Stephanie Rozene draws upon the fine line between design and the visual arts. Her work is the result of extensive research and gifted craftsmanship. Through the medium of ceramics (and with special attention to specific patterns, ornaments, and forms) she explores the politics of European ceramics and traces international developments in this medium back to the reigns of French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. This is her first solo museum show.

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Feats of Clay spotlights the varied and creative ceramics art education programs in our high schools throughout Onondaga County and Central New York. The continued success of Feats of Clay rests with the talented and dedicated high school art teachers and art students.

Student Art and Photography Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Whitney Applied Technology Center
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Davidovich in Situ: A Video Art Project
Point of Contact Gallery

Price: Free
Point of Contact Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Argentine video artist Jaime Davidovich returns to Syracuse University after an amazing year of grand-scale museum exhibitions worldwide, to work on site at The Point of Contact Gallery. Davidovich will present a series of his classic videos along with collage, photography, and a new series of paintings that he will produce on site.

Davidovich, on Painting and Video Art:

"My paintings are hybrids combining the tactile sensation of painting with the electronic pulse of video. The works are small in scale and intimate in nature. I want to do an art that speaks on a one-to-one basis with the viewer, no actors or story line, just a scale for human dialogue. In a time of video as spectacle, my work is indeed conflictive. I am interested in establishing a link (no pun intended) between Morandi and the Internet; the personal gesture and digital reproduction. These are the opposites that attract me. I use video because it is intimate, personal. I use the brush because is my gestural DNA."

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

Price: Free
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium
2 Clinton Square, Syracuse

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

Price: Free
Syracuse Technology Garden
235 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists include Fred Zimmerman, David Yaman, Kathy Williams, Carl Steckler, Laurie Seamans, Meg Richardson, Lyla Phillips, Allen Phillips, Joan Niswender, Richard Mitchell, Amy Hnatko, Emily Gibbons, Serry Dans, Kathie Beale, and David Beale.

Orange Pulp: The Pulp Magazine & Contemporary Culture
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Bird Library, 6th Floor
Syracuse University, Syracuse

On display will be pulp magazines, notably titles like Weird Tales and Amazing Stories; the typescript of Isaac Asimov's "Strange Playfellow," which introduced readers to one of science fiction's best known characters, Robbie the Robot; and correspondence with figures like Ray Bradbury.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Human Nature Series: Works of Maria Janina Rizzo
Westcott Community Art Gallery

Price: Free
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

Emerging artist Maria Rizzo exhibits 15 paintings that depict the human nature in an explosive combination of color and symbolism.

Maria Janina Rizzo was born and raised in Italy where she lived until 2007. She received a diploma from the High School for the Arts, and was mentored by the eclectic painter Roberto Giussani, an essential figure for the growth of her artistic development. She then continued on with her studies of painting at Syracuse University. In 2010 she opened "ART IT: Modern & Unique Art with a touch of Italian class" with the desire to offer original paintings and customized artwork. Her paintings were recently featured at the Emerging Women Artists of CNY show at the Red House Gallery, and at the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society.

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

The images in Canaries, an exhibition of photographs by Thilde Jensen, are a personal account of the life Jensen has lived with multiple chemical sensitivity, and the people she has met who suffer from the same condition. People with this sensitivity have been dubbed "human canaries," and they are the casualties of what Jensen calls a "ubiquitous synthetic chemical culture."

Jensen became so sensitive to chemicals in the air that she could not sit in traffic, read a book or sit next to someone wearing perfume. She was forced to wear a gas mask when entering banks, supermarkets and doctor's offices. She left her life in New York City, her husband and her career, and moved to the country, where she lived in a tent away from the regular chemicals such as laundry detergents, pesticides and exhaust fumes.

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Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

That Year of Living features stunning black-and-white photographs by Jeffrey Henson Scales. Diagnosed with cancer in 2008, Scales was forced to, in his words, weigh the possibilities of his own demise, and whether he had achieved what he felt he was put here to do. It was this diagnosis and contemplation, along with the urging of his wife, Meg Henson Scales, which led him to return to making photographs on a daily basis.

The images in That Year of Living were made in the year following his cancer diagnosis and surgery. Scales photographed mainly in and around Times Square, depicting the part of New York City that he visited every day going to and from work at The New York Times. The images capture the certain hardness mixed with joy, sadness, determination and bewilderment that is found in the faces of young and old alike in New York City. Created in the months following his own experience with mortality, the photographs explore the journey of life and death found in the faces on the streets of New York.

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design"
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

Price: Free
Genet Design Gallery
The Warehouse, 350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Design Gallery at The Warehouse will host two concurrent exhibitions of student work: "Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design."

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" features the work of students enrolled in weaving classes taught by faculty member Sarah Saulson and explores the creative potential of weaving with repurposed materials, both recycled and new. The students were inspired by and found meaning in sources as diverse and commonplace as newspaper, bottle caps, paper bags, zippers, candy wrappers, wire, pantyhose and feathers. The project provides a rich arena for the artists to comment on their lives and the environment, as well as for fun and surprising color and texture exploration. The exhibition includes a loom, and visitors to the gallery are encouraged to sit down and experience weaving.

Presented by museum studies graduate students who are completing their first year of gallery experience in the Practicum course, "Creativity through Exhibition Design" features computer-aided drawings and three-dimensional models of the Design Gallery. Students employed universal design concepts including color selection, spatial arrangement and lighting techniques to put their individual creativity into a theoretical exhibition based on a collection of Tibetan works of art.

For more information about the "Handwoven" show, contact Saulson at sfsaulso@syr.edu. For more information about the "Creativity through Exhibition Design" show, contact Bradley Hudson at bjhudson@syr.edu.

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

The April show features self portraits by gallery members in a variety of mediums.

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Freyer's series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom's high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children's mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of "dress up"--the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills--become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created a site-specific installation that streams across the façade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms" and "Survival" that challenge viewers' assumptions about the world we live in through the use of language as art. Whether questioning consumerist impulses or lamenting the struggles of daily living, Jenny Holzer always provokes a response. Her work crosses the boundary between poetry and visual art, and suggests both the limitations and power of technology and the information age.

For more than 30 years, this influential American conceptual artist has been creating subversive works that blend in among advertisements in public spaces questioning and confronting our passive consumption of information. Since the early 1970s, Holzer has been collecting and writing phrases and aphorisms found in literature, philosophy and contemporary culture. She calls these summaries her Truisms, and has printed them on bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches, footstools, stickers, t-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, video, sound, light projection, and the Internet. In 1982, Holzer installed "Truisms" on one of Times Square's gigantic LED billboards. In the 1980s, for her "Survival" series, Holzer adopted more personal and urgent messages about the realities of everyday living. Power, vulnerability, violence, tenderness, moral struggles and motherhood are courageously chronicled in this series which continuously prods the viewer to question the role of individuals in society.

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Western Double Feature
Syracuse Cinephile Society

Price: $3 regular, $2.50 members
Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

California Gold Rush (1946)
Director: R.G. Springsteen. Cast: Wild Bill Elliott, Robert Blake (as Bobby Blake), Alice Fleming, Peggy Curtis, Russell Simpson, Dick Curtis. Red Ryder (Elliott) poses as an outlaw to capture a gang of stagecoach robbers. Naturally Little Beaver (Blake) tags along to help in this fast-moving adventure.

New Frontier (aka "Frontier Horizon")(1939)
Director: George Sherman. Cast: John Wayne, Ray Corrigan, Raymond Hatton, Jennifer Jones (as Phyllis Isley), Eddy Waller. The Three Mesquiteers (Wayne, Corrigan and Hatton) are good guys, but they get into hot water when they convince a group of settlers to exchange their present property for land which could turn out to be worthless. Wayne's last "Mesquiteers" film before moving on to solo features.

Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

Price: Free
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

Price: Free
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

Nikola Tesla: The Forgotten Wizard
Syracuse Stage

Price: Free with museum admission ($7 adults, $6 children/seniors)
The MOST (Museum of Science & Technology)
500 S. Franklin St., Syracuse

Nikola Tesla: The Forgotten portrays an imagined encounter between the legendary wizard Merlin and Tesla, the father of modern electricity, whose discovery of the alternating current is considered one of the 10 greatest inventions of all time. Roughly 45 minutes in length, the presentation will include a performance and brief Q&A.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Window Project: Stephanie Rozene--The Politics of Porcelain
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This spring, both the main gallery and Window Projects feature emerging female artists and celebrate their artistic achievements at a time that coincides with International Women's Day (March 2011). Stephanie Rozene draws upon the fine line between design and the visual arts. Her work is the result of extensive research and gifted craftsmanship. Through the medium of ceramics (and with special attention to specific patterns, ornaments, and forms) she explores the politics of European ceramics and traces international developments in this medium back to the reigns of French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. This is her first solo museum show.

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Feats of Clay spotlights the varied and creative ceramics art education programs in our high schools throughout Onondaga County and Central New York. The continued success of Feats of Clay rests with the talented and dedicated high school art teachers and art students.

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

Price: Free
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium
2 Clinton Square, Syracuse

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

Price: Free
Syracuse Technology Garden
235 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists include Fred Zimmerman, David Yaman, Kathy Williams, Carl Steckler, Laurie Seamans, Meg Richardson, Lyla Phillips, Allen Phillips, Joan Niswender, Richard Mitchell, Amy Hnatko, Emily Gibbons, Serry Dans, Kathie Beale, and David Beale.

Orange Pulp: The Pulp Magazine & Contemporary Culture
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Bird Library, 6th Floor
Syracuse University, Syracuse

On display will be pulp magazines, notably titles like Weird Tales and Amazing Stories; the typescript of Isaac Asimov's "Strange Playfellow," which introduced readers to one of science fiction's best known characters, Robbie the Robot; and correspondence with figures like Ray Bradbury.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Human Nature Series: Works of Maria Janina Rizzo
Westcott Community Art Gallery

Price: Free
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

Emerging artist Maria Rizzo exhibits 15 paintings that depict the human nature in an explosive combination of color and symbolism.

Maria Janina Rizzo was born and raised in Italy where she lived until 2007. She received a diploma from the High School for the Arts, and was mentored by the eclectic painter Roberto Giussani, an essential figure for the growth of her artistic development. She then continued on with her studies of painting at Syracuse University. In 2010 she opened "ART IT: Modern & Unique Art with a touch of Italian class" with the desire to offer original paintings and customized artwork. Her paintings were recently featured at the Emerging Women Artists of CNY show at the Red House Gallery, and at the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society.

Annual High School Seniors Exhibit
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

High schools within a 30 mile radius of Syracuse are invited to display seniors’ artwork and have them juried by the CNY Art Guild.

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius